I’ve read Stephen Bennett’s blog entry about an inappropriate booklet found by antigay activists a Boston-area sex-ed program. (Previous XGW coverage.) I’ve read Bennett’s quotations of GLSEN and public officials, the blog comments, and the linked news articles:
Boston Herald, May 18
Boston Herald, May 19
Boston Globe, May 19
Some quick observations:
- The booklet’s wording does seem to be directed inappropriately at youth, despite Fenway Community Health’s claims.
- As for claims that the booklet is pure pornography, I note that antigay activist Brian Camenker, of the Article 8 Alliance, is only showing the public a few offensive pages from the book, so I can’t determine whether the booklet, overall, is as offensive as what Camenker is spotlighting.
- I see no apology or retraction from Bennett, Camenker, Throckmorton, and the other antigay activists behind the current scandal, for their effort to blame GLSEN for the action of some pathetic idiot at Fenway Community Health.
If I have more thoughts later, I’ll add them here.
Addendum, May 20: Bennett, Camenker, Throckmorton et al may be reluctant to share their own agendas for sex education for a reason: Few Americans would sympathize with these gentlemen if it were publicly known how extreme some of their closest allies are.
The Washington Post on May 19 profiled Michelle Turner, one of Throckmorton’s allies in a battle to overturn comprehensive abstinence-plus sex education in suburban Washington, D.C.
Post reporter Paul Duggan offers a flattering look at Turner, a divorced-and-remarried Mormon. According to the Post, Turner has exercised total control over her children’s access to friends, culture, and the media, ensuring that they are never exposed to TV, movies, music or people that she deems objectionable. This includes a TV device that automatically mutes televised speech and substitutes a caption containing her own selected words.
Now, it seems, she wishes to extend that control — much of her strict Mormon way of life — over the public-school children of Montgomery County, Maryland.
How is it inappropriate to provide gay youth with accurate safe-sex information tailored to their needs?
Dan, I think what Mike is saying (please correct me if I am wrong) is that the booklet is supposed to be aimed at adults (e.g., over 18 according to the writers and distributors of the booklet), but the language seems aimed at younger kids.
The language repeatedly treats its readers as “youth” and “boys.”
It also strikes me as very pre-18 in tone. I’ll be charitable for a moment, and admit that perhaps that booklet’s writers thought they needed to talk down to 18- to 24-year-olds using the language of a 12-year-old in a toy commercial.
Apart from the age issue, my other concern over appropriateness of that one silly booklet relates to depth of information.
We can’t tell, from the very few pages that Camenker’s group selectively posted, whether the booklet provides readers with sufficient information about the dangers of various behaviors, so that readers can either make fully informed and healthy decisions, or know where to go for additional information before making a decision.
Whatever the problems with the booklet, it seems obvious to me that Bennett, Camenker and Throckmorton hoped to smear the entire abstinence-plus philosophy, nationwide, based on one tacky booklet out of hundreds that were offered by numerous health groups at one sex-ed fair in one town.
What they would replace abstinence-plus with, they never really seem to say.
haha oh dear me I’m home from work and actually read the booklet. Wow this makes XY magazine look like the New Yorker.
This controversy regarding the program at Brookline HS is vaguely reminiscent of a controversy from several years ago regarding a weekend program at Tufts University. I’m sure that some here remember that previous controversy–it gave rise to the so-called “fisting” issue. Camenker was also involved in the Tufts controversy as well–although his “organization” had a different name then. Indeed, Camenker seems to have become a front man regarding more than a few anti-gay causes in Massachusetts. (Must be a lucrative business, but I wonder who is sponsoring him.)
I’m not sure I would agree with MikeA’s apparent suggestion that directing a booklet regarding safe sex to youth is inappropriate (first bullet). It seems that kids–including gay kids–are having sex at a much younger age than appeared to be the case when I was growing up in the 1960s. Providing them with information that might help them protect themselves is hardly inappropriate. And doing so in an entertaining manner–which is what I got out of the brochure–might help them remember it.
Fenway Community Health Center is a highly regarded institution in the Boston area that has been providing health services to the gay&lesbian&transgendered community for decades. It’s unfortunate that they apparently took a defensive attitude to this controversy. They should have been bold and up-front: Yes, it was directed to gay youth because we want to try to help save their lives.
I agree that youths (including pre-adolescent boys and girls) are unfortunately having sex regardless of what their parents say or demand, and therefore they need safe-sex information to avoid harming or killing themselves. I also agree that the information needs to be conveyed in an entertaining and memorable fashion.
I disagree that the available excerpts from this particular booklet are as nearly safety-oriented as they could have been — but again, we’re only seeing one antigay activist group’s selective depiction of the booklet.
Raj
No insult, but I sometimes think you overemphasize the ex/anti-gay movement being about money.
However, I agree with you on Camenker. I read a website at MassNews.com, which is sort of a clearing house for anti-gay right wing anti-marriage activists. I recall reading within this past year a plea for help for poor Camenker who (if I recall correctly) had lost his job and was in need of funds because he was taking on the “Activist Judges” full time.
The plea for funds stopped and Camenker became even more visible. Every time there is anything anti-gay going on in Massachusetts or the area, Camenker is there. A quick search on the Boston Globe website pulls his name 17 times in the past year.
Also… it seems Camenker was charged with something, but I haven’t found what. This is from the 9/15/04 MassNews website:
“Camenker Refuses to Settle
But Camenker has refused to settle (saying this is too important an issue) despite the fact that no lawyer will defend him anymore because he has no money. He will soon be defending himself at an absurd type of hearing known as a Motion Session.
Our Publisher, Atty. J. Edward Pawlick, says he has never heard of such a thing at any court other than here (although it might be found elsewhere). In most courts, every case is assigned to a judge who remains in charge until the case is closed. Under the Massachusetts system, a judge will quickly hear a Motion in any case even though he knows nothing at all about the matter. Lawyers will wait for their favorite judge to be scheduled for Motion Session and then run in with their case because they think that that particular judge will hold for them.
That system has been particularly devastating to Camenker because one judge ruled a few months ago that a summary judgment should be entered holding that Camenker was guilty of all charges even though no trial has ever taken place.”
I did a little more looking and it seems Camenker was being prosecuted for sneaking a tape recorder into a school, recording a youth conference, and making that tape available to the public.
It’s not legal to secretly record minors who believe they are in a confidential setting and then use the tape for political purposes.
Mike, you aren’t seriously going to suggest that someone like Camenker is going to provide excerpts from the booklet relating to safe-sex, are you? Camenker has a gig demonizing gay people.
I couldn’t find the brochure on-line (apparently Dan did) but you really don’t believe that someone like Camenker would post anything from the brochure
I agree that youths (including pre-adolescent boys and girls) are unfortunatelyhaving sex regardless of what their parents say or demand…
“Unfortunately?” Mike, I hate to tell you, but some of us live in the real world. If I could have figured out how to get the guy who sat in the seat behind me in my AP chemistry class in 1966 into bed with me, I would have howled with joy. I was 16 at the time and he was a hunk. And I wouldn’t have cared what my parents would have said. I was jailbait, but so was he. And my interest in him would have been quite evident to anyone paying attention in class, since my attention to him was being carried on in the classroom, and, interestingly enough, he had no problem with the attention that I was paying.
Let’s get a few things straight.
First, one should recognize is that kids apparently want to have sex. The fantasy that they might not is just that–fantasy. Adults might try to discourage them from having sex until they are older, but there is some percentage of kids who are going to have sex with each other. It isn’t going to work. A number of decades ago, there were a number of fantasies regarding abstinance. I agree that adults should probably be discouraged from trying to seduce kids into having sex with them. But what would you suggest about gay kids who might want to try to seduce adults into having sex with them? But apparently some kids apparently want to get their rocks off, regardless of how “unfortunate” we adults might consider it. We can decry it. We can denuciate it. We can yell about it from the hilltops. But it apparently is going to happen. What is to be done about it? I seriously don’t know. I have to admit it…I don’t know.
Second, apparently gay kids aren’t stupid enough to believe the “abstinence until marriage” silliness because they know that, unless they reside in Massachusetts they’ll never be married. They aren’t going to get pregnant from engaging in gay sex, after all.
Third, what we need to do is to try to get kids who might want to have sex to minimize their risk of getting HIV/AIDS. As far as I can tell, that was what the FCHC (Fenway Community Health Center) was trying to do with their brochure/booklet. I don’t know how to relate this. We have buried more than a few friends from the 1970s and 1980s who died from to HIV/AIDS. If we can get young gay boys into protecting themselves, so much the better, as far as I’m concerned. The opposition might feel differently, but, if so, it would only be because they want young gay boys to be dead. I am quite serious about that. It would be because they want young gay boys to be dead.
Fourth, and far more importantly, I would have preferred that the FCHC had been up front and aggressive in the denunciation of the Camenker crowd. I don’t know why they didn’t. Their rather tepid response only suggests that they should continue their attacks.
Timothy at May 20, 2005 01:44 PM
Apparently you are unaware of MassNews.com. It is the website of a publication “MassNews,” from a publisher Pawlick (forget his first name). Pawlick was previously been the owner and publisher of Mass Lawyers Weekly–a reasonably well regarded publication of legal issues in Massachusetts.
About a decade ago, Pawlick sold Mass Lawyers Weekly, and started Mass News. Mass News’s first publication was an anti-gay rag. It was a multi-page anti-gay diatribe. It was vicious. It was virtually a recap of everything you might have read from NARTH and Paul Cameron.
And, you know what? They had the temerity to print the diatribe it on paper and deposit it on peoples’ lawns in more than a few suburbs of Boston. I remember that quite well. People–straight people–were writing to the Boston Globe denouncing Pawlick’s actions. They were literally appalled at the hatefulness in his publication. I was amazed at the intensity of the reaction.
raj,
I’ve been following them for about a year and a half. Poor Pawlick and his wife Sally seem senile. Either that or crochety old coots.
But they are a great source of info. They seem to assume that the only people who read them are their allies, and so they tend to tell a little bit too much about themselves and their alliances and plans. It’s a good one-stop website to find out what the anti-gay crowd’s up to. They don’t seem to have much tie-in to the national groups (I think they are resentful of the Fuzzy Focus on the Family crowd) but for New England stuff they’re pretty informative.
And as for a reaction to them… they are pretty nasty, and most people really don’t like nasty. And you can tell that they don’t even know it. Actually I love it when people like these nuts or Crazy Lou Sheldon get out in front of average america.
And if anyone wants to see limited exerpts from the Little Black Book, they are on Camenker’s “Article 8” website
https://www.article8.org/docs/news_events/glsen_043005/black_book/black_book_inside.htm
From the page numbers, you can tell that they are only showing a portion, but what do you expect…
No insult, but I sometimes think you overemphasize the ex/anti-gay movement being about money.
You tell me, Tim.
Bennett claims to be an entertainer. He sings. He sings songs. He’s what we used to call the “singer, dancer, actor, waiter.” That may be before your time.
I’ve never heard him sing. Maybe he’s a good singer.
But what does that have to do with him being “ex-gay”?
If he and his wife are happy, does that make him a better singer? Maybe it does, maybe it doesn’t. But what if he had no wife…? Would that suggest that he isn’t as good a singer?
If he and his children are happy, does that make him a better entertainer? Maybe it does, maybe it doesn’t. What if he had no children…? Would that suggest that he isn’t as good an entertainer?
If he and the men that he purportedly screwed over in getting to where he is are happy, does that make him any better? As an entertainer, that is. Quite frankly, but Bennett’s “ex-gay” stuff reminds me of the “disease of the week” soap opera on ABC from the early 1990s. It’s time to call it for what it is.
Sorry for the last, but just to let you know, I have actually been there. I have known people who have gone from being apparently gay to apparently straight. I have also known people who have gone from being apparently straight to apparently gay. And I have also known people who have gone from being apparently straight to apparently gay to apparently straight to apparently gay again. The last was my first boyfriend, and an example of the first is our insurance agent. And they didn’t need any of these “ministries.”
If Bennett wants to sing, he should sing. For the life of me, I don’t understand how his struggles makes his singing any better. He should be encouraged to struggle, but, if he wants to sing, he should sing. But apparently there’s a lot of money to be made by bitching and moaning. Which is what he is really doing.
raj…
It’s like they say in Gypsie, you gotta have a gimmick.
And in the evangelical movement, you get a lot farther if you can say “I used to be a [fill in evil bad deviant person here]”.
So, yeah, it’s probably true for a lot of them that this is a money maker. But it isn’t that simple. I’m certain that many of the ex/anti-gay crowd really and truly believe what they say.
The real motivation for many of these folks has to do with the feeling you get when you think that God loves you just a teensie bit more, cuz of all the rightous finger wagging you do.
So, while I do agree that $$ is a motivation for some, it’s not the complete story.
… and my point above about Camenker, is that I agree. In his case, someone should follow the money.
He seems to have the leisure time to show up at every school event with electronic equipment in tow. And just months ago he was “broke”. So it makes me wonder too about his financing source.
It’s actually funny to me. We were giving out the same type of material to the same age group through Whitman-Walker back in 1992. We were doing much more on the D/L and training other young people to be peer educators, but it was still the same stuff.
It was a great idea then and remains so today.